Rescue team leader to talk about his experience in NZ

Pete Roberts who is going to New Zealand on behalf of Northumberland National Mountain Rescue Team

Published:11:30Friday 17 October 2014

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A rescue team leader from Northumberland is to speak at a conference in New Zealand.

Pete Roberts, team leader of Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team (NNPMRT), has been asked to talk at New Zealand’s LandSAR (Search and Rescue) bi-annual conference.

He will make presentations to these search-and-rescue volunteers about the work he has done during the 40-plus years he has been in mountain rescue as part of NNPMRT and also as a founding member of The Centre for Search Research (TCSR).

TCSR was founded in 1998 as a registered charity by Pete and his colleague Dave Perkins to allow them to progress research into various aspects of searching for missing persons.

Their main focus has been on two fundamentals of the ‘problem’ of missing; where to look and how to look. These two aspects form the basis of training courses that they have delivered around the world.

Pete will also be talking to a group of New Zealand Police and the New Zealand SAR Secretariat about his involvement in Lockerbie and the UK Study of missing-person behaviour.

This study helps plan where to look for various categories of missing persons and is based on what people, who have been the subject of a missing-person incident, have done previously.

It allows search planners to build a profile of the missing person and then predict possible locations where they might be and how far they might have travelled.

TCSR has also developed techniques for searching for missing persons, particularly the first response to a search when time and urgency are crucial. TCSR has focused on The Initial Response phase, which can be likened to the paramedic ‘golden hour’ when an urgent response saves lives.